Kinesics
by Rabbitprint
Summary: Set pre-game, Tamamo-no-mae and Kuzu-no-ha, spoilers for backstories for them and Seimei. "Your son," Tamamo continued nonchalantly, glancing down towards Seimei, who had dropped his own arm uneasily, "is woefully lacking in even these basics. Since you apparently will not tutor him, someone has to show him how to properly use a fan."


_Tap, tap._

"Which dance is this, uncle?"

"This one is special, Seimei. _This_ one is called, 'Catching Mice in the Grain Field'. You use it to show when you're hungry, but also when you'd like to have company on your hunt. Shall we?"

Kuzu-no-ha's footsteps were louder than she intended: human-loud and tactless. She sped up recklessly, blending each soft _whisk_ of her _tabi_ against the floor into one waterfall rush, faster and faster, in time with the panic beating through her heart. Haste almost skidded her straight off the walkway when she reached a corner. She wheeled her arms and grabbed for the railing grimly, imagining the chortles of laughter she would earn if she went tumbling into the dirt.

Two turns later, she rounded the final corner to see her son and Tamamo-no-mae both poised in the courtyard together, their fans raised in perfect, horrifying unison.

Seimei looked up, his eyes wide and hopeful; his expression was filled with nothing but the eagerness to learn. Tamamo - of course - had already turned his head towards her direction, poised like a statue, or an actor waiting for the crowd to applaud. If his true ears had been visible, they would have been twitching with suppressed laughter, quivering with delight.

As it was, Tamamo merely flicked his fan around with a twist of his fingers, flipping the wooden ribs into a smirk. "Here to join us, my dear Kuzu?" he asked, deliberately skipping the formality of her full name.

"Tamamo-no-_mae_," she said, using all the bluntness of his. To her credit, she did not instantly take off his fingers with her teeth. "What _exactly_ do you think you're doing?"

The look he gave her was artlessly innocent, though he lowered his hand in submission at her ire. "Why, a necessary lesson for any young kit. Your son," he continued nonchalantly, glancing down towards Seimei, who had dropped his own arm uneasily, "is _woefully_ lacking in even these basics. Since _you_ apparently will not tutor him, someone has to show him how to properly use a fan."

"I haven't taught him because he doesn't _need_ to know," she hissed back, fully alarmed now. If she had a _hiōgi_ in her own grip, she knew exactly how she would position it: wrist crooked down, fingers and blades folded tightly shut, representing ears and tails laid back in distress. As it was, her fingernails only twitched reflexively against her palm. "That's _exactly_ the kind of training that will put him further at risk. Humans may not speak with their fans - but that doesn't mean they won't notice the stories we've hidden inside them. What will you do when he's older, and an onmyōji notices him making gestures for tails he shouldn't have? What excuse will my son have for using fox-tongue _here_, at court?"

Tamamo swept around to face her in a lazy swaying of his hips. The layers of his intricate robes rustled like a distant crashing of waves; his _geta_ tapped in wooden giggles on the stone. "Then he can say he stole the knowledge from a kitsune, can't he? Like all the other grand onmyōji around him. After all, that _is_ what you're training him to become," the man added, arching an eyebrow even as his mouth broadened shamelessly into a smirk. "Another petty human spell-weaver who will rob us of our secrets and claim them for their own. Such hungry little beggars they are. And here _you_ are, Kuzu-no-ha, tucked among their schemes like a mouse in a millet sack. How can you bury your son so deeply in human affairs, and then still claim you're keeping him safe?"

The words were brash enough to sting, purposefully inciteful in their mockery. The point of Tamamo's chin had lifted: a challenge arrogant enough to demand an answer.

If Kuzu-no-ha were human, she surely would have already taken the bait.

But Tamamo's fan offered a different story, more restrained than his voice. The man had folded it shut, and was now tapping it steadily against his palm in a smooth, unrelenting beat - not fast enough to indicate a tail lash of agitation, nor the thrashing of fear and surrender, but the thoughtful pace of a fox still gnawing at a bone to see if it had meat.

"Mother?" Seimei asked, looking between them both in confusion. The silence that had fallen over the courtyard was exactly that; without her and Tamamo using verbal speech, her son did not know how to interpret the rest. "Should I not study this?"

She took too long to answer out loud; Tamamo turned upon her son next. "You blend in so much better than my children, Seimei," he remarked, dangerously pleasant. "It's because you take after your mother, I'm sure. She's beyond even _my_ skills at pretending certain things. Tell me, Kuzu-no-ha's son," he continued, a flash of his teeth gracing his smile, "have you never felt the need to show _your_ tail?"

Seimei, wisely enough, held his tongue; Kuzu-no-ha thanked her luck that he had taken so well to their nightly games of secrets to know better than to share information carelessly now. He blinked up at Tamamo-no-mae - and then looked at her, canny enough to remain mute, but unsure how to deflect Tamamo either.

Tamamo did not miss her son's caution. He flicked his gaze back over towards Kuzu-no-ha, cutting right to the source. "Stop convincing your child that I'm a social miscreant."

"Stop _being_ one, and I will," she retorted automatically.

He snorted with laughter, not bothering to conceal it; the honesty of the noise jostled Kuzu-no-ha out of her bristled defense. She shook her head in exasperation, dismissing the other fox long enough to look at her son. Seimei was already taller since the last time that Tamamo had visited, the crest of his head rising closer to the man's shoulder. Her son was getting older, as much as she wished otherwise. Childhood illness was no longer his greatest threat; now, it was the people around him who had a higher chance of killing him. As his power grew, drawing more and more attention to itself, Kuzu-no-ha would fall under greater scrutiny as well; the eye of the court would fix upon Seimei, and not spare the people around him from its scathing glare.

Tamamo-no-mae was right. By keeping Seimei here, as part of Heian-Kyo itself, she risked it all. No fox with any wit would keep their children so close to an enemy.

"Go practice, Seimei," she surrendered, allowing Tamamo that much of a victory. "Learn the dance, if only so you know not to use it."

Once her son had moved further into the courtyard - out of hearing range - she descended from the walkway, sliding her feet into the nearest pair of sandals so that she could stalk towards Tamamo directly. She could smell his most recent travels on him as she approached, all her senses still on alert. He brought with him a history of incense and charcoal and forest dirt, and she wondered what trouble he had carried in on the hems on his robes now.

"If you continue to seek out mischief here," she informed him, hating her own resentment even as she did not know how else to express it, "I will bar you from my estate."

But Tamamo had already shut his fan and tucked it in his obi, sensing, perhaps, how far he had pushed her limits. "You might hope to protect your son by keeping him apart from his lineage," he replied urgently, making quick shakes of his head that sent his long hair whispering around his shoulders. "But it won't save him. All you're doing is leaving him vulnerable, without the proper knowledge of how to defend himself from attackers who will target his blood." The man frowned, but his disapproval could not entirely mask the undertone of sorrow that pinched his mouth. "If nothing else, teach your son the joy of who and _what_ he is. Do not teach him _shame_."

The words cut quick into her chest; despite herself, Kuzu-no-ha made a small, pained exhale of dismay. "He's learning all he needs to about our kind."

"He's learning that his mother must hide herself, and that he must as well, or else you'll _both_ be slaughtered," Tamamo snapped, lightning-quick. "What makes you think that _that_ will give him any cause to love that part of himself? _Or_ his kin?"

Even if it was predictable to hear from another kitsune, the sentiment was no less caustic - particularly from Tamamo, who never stopped talking with his fan even with all his tails showing and ears in full display, _shouting_ out his nature with each extravagant gesture. The pride he felt in being a yōkai could never be suppressed. The gods might have punished him and his wife, but never once had Kuzu-no-ha ever heard Tamamo wish he had been human - even if it might have saved Chiyo.

Tamamo-no-mae would never regret being born a fox. Others of their kind did. They had been ground down slowly into bitterness at their own blood: weary of being hunted, hated, cast out, resorting to the lie of being less than themselves, if only to keep from endless injuries. Even as Kuzu-no-ha hid her nature away - telling herself over and over that the smallest amount could not be risked, that it was _necessary_ \- she felt the burden of that deception settling more and more heavily on her shoulders, tearing her in half.

"What other choice _is_ there?" she admitted. Her lips pulled back from her teeth; she felt the snarl building in her throat. "If this allows humans to believe he's one of them, then aren't these measures worth it?"

Tamamo turned both fan and face aside: a rejection that needed no further elaboration. "Either way, you still must teach him. If not you, then another." Merciless, the other fox leaned in for the kill, the ornaments in his hair jingling in golden melodies. "My darling Kuzu-no-ha. What will you do if he dismisses his heritage completely, and really _does_ become one of those onmyōji out there? Those fine court fools, who would imprison and enslave you. Will he wonder, then, if it was by spellcraft that his father caught you? If _that_ was how he came about to be born - not by choice, but a compulsion that forced you into it? If you ever really loved him at all, but were forced to fake every drop of affection?"

She slapped him, hard; her claws were out. They raked across Tamamo's skin, scrawling crimson lines from cheek to chin. The sting of the impact tingled in her palm. Blood beaded quickly in the cuts, spilling over into small trickles which crept down Tamamo-no-mae's face.

Tamamo took the blow without flinching. With deliberate slowness, he lifted his fingertips to wipe at his cheek, his tongue darting out neatly to lick his hand clean even as his eyes rested accusingly upon her.

"Without your children to keep you leashed, your mischief becomes too cruel, Tamamo," she warned him softly. "Don't dishonor them."

He took that strike as well, though his gaze finally dropped. Without further provocation, he pulled out a cloth from his sleeve to blot at his face: a small, embroidered _tenugui_ that was fine enough to have been stolen from some noble's bedside. It was a waste of good weaving - he'd have to burn it afterwards, if he wanted to be careful - but it meant that Tamamo was taking care not to allow his blood to speckle the dirt of her courtyard, and she appreciated that respect.

"With _your_ child, you forget yourself," he countered - but carefully, pressing the cloth in place as he waited for the injury to clot. "And I have to watch you starve, penned up here inside this cage. You're withering away like this, acting as if your life is a stain upon this world. If that's what you're teaching your son by example, then _that's_ what he will learn - about you, about our kind, about _himself._" He gave her only a moment for the accusation to sink in, and then he was stepping closer again, his voice hushed and urgent. "Don't listen to the onmyōji around you, Kuzu. Don't start believing their words as the truth. You may teach Seimei human ways all you want, but to the rest of the world, he will always be half-fox. And while _your_ kin will always be here to protect him, Kuzu-no-ha," he warned, deliberate across each syllable, "his human kin will _not._"

She tried not to wince at the reminder. Her jaw tightened anyway. "Fox protections will not save him from human hands," she countered, but the strength was already ebbing from her voice, bleeding out as slowly as the injuries she had inflicted on Tamamo's face. "If he is to survive the capital, he must speak _their_ language first. _This_ is the most important thing for him to learn now. I will teach him the rest - later."

"And when will that be?" Tamamo countered softly. His sleeves brushed against her; the scent of pine needles and sap wafted to her nose, reminding her of the freedom she lacked. "Tell me, at what _exact_ moment do you think you'll finally be able to declare that your child is safe enough? When Heian-kyo is ruled by tengu? When humans flee from these lands and never return? When the gods themselves arrive from Takamagahara, and prostrate themselves before our feet? Will you feel safe enough _then_, Kuzu-no-ha?"

She did not want to answer. Enough nights had been lost to doubt and second-guessing. She couldn't count how often she had considered fleeing from it all and taking Seimei with her, curling up with him in a remote den somewhere, both of them dressed in fur and four paws together. She could imagine Seimei's fine white pelt in the forest, his spells glittering behind him like jewels in the rain. He would be a new legend for their kind to rally behind, a myth incarnate.

He would be a new legend, indeed - for onmyōji to hunt down and kill.

"No," she admitted, hating herself anew for the confession. "There is no refuge in this world, not for any of us. All we can do is lie."

Tamamo - surprisingly enough - spared her from being dragged further through the truth, dabbing gingerly at his cheek before finally tucking the cloth away. "Well then, Kuzu-no-ha," he coaxed, and she could hear the gentleness in his voice, along with the resignation. "When was the last time you had a good romp? We could go play in the capital once the moon rises tonight. Eat all the offerings from the temples and switch _ema_ between the shrines. Snatch babes from their baskets and hide them in skeins of silk, like lost caterpillars without their cocoons. Trick watchmen into indolence, and merchants out of their coin. The city is just _waiting_ for us to partake in its delights," he pressed, stepping away so that he could stretch an arm out in a grand wave towards the walls of the estate. "Let your child sleep here in your den if you must. You and I must go out to _play._"

The temptation was overwhelming. She could already imagine the cool dew against her flanks, the sound of night insects in her ears. "I won't join you in your games," she claimed, but weakly; they both heard her wavering. "Your recklessness would call the gods straight to us."

"No?" Tamamo needled. "What are we without our fun?"

But she only shook her head again, mute, not trusting her own words in case Tamamo would be able to argue successfully against them.

He sighed.

"If nothing else, at least share a dance with me, Kuzu-no-ha. One of your favorites - one of your best," he continued, the tip of his fan tilting to the side in what would have been a pleading ear-flick. "Show me, 'Catching the Monk's Gaze.' Or can it be that you've already forgotten the steps?"

"Of course not," she protested, her pride needled - but then Tamamo thrust the fan out like a spear towards her, an imperious demand of paper and paint.

The challenge was clear. She had no choice but to accept.

The wooden slats of the fan's guard rubbed against her palm as she took it into her grip, her thumb finding the wheel of its blades automatically. The gorge opened obediently at her touch. Anger helped her hold the fan upright, its colors spread - but with horror, Kuzu-no-ha found the opening words escaping her, scattering like startled birds through the trees.

She stood there, poised in the courtyard, frustration unbalancing her further with each passing moment. The sun was too hot on her skin. She couldn't remember.

"What are you seeking, from where do you stray?" Tamamo prompted, waiting.

His recitation brought her back to herself. Kuzu-no-ha drew in the first deep breath, holding it in her lungs. "Lost do I wander, both here and away," she sang back, taking the first careful step to the right as she began to circle him.

It was a slow dance, like many of the ones designed for allure: graceful, easy motions which were meant to fit within the natural flow of one's body language, training both reflexes and wit. Monks weren't its only targets. Seduction was an art which manifested on multiple levels, and while luring someone with physical passion was the most obvious technique, there were many creatures in positions of power who would recognize - and reject - such overtures. It took effort to tiptoe around their guard.

Innocence was key. It was critical to appear guileless. Kuzu-no-ha's role was that of a petitioner seeking guidance, an impressionable newcomer who already trembled with respect. She allowed her long sleeves to sway easily as she moved, like willow branches in the breeze; her fingers crooked as she reached up to brush her hair back behind one rounded ear, the skin of her wrist peeking out from her robes.

It would have looked strange to an outsider: two people reciting fragments of childish rhymes back and forth while patiently circling around one another, entertaining themselves in a bizarre conversation that both of them already seemed to know by heart. But a conversation was what it was intended to be. Habit and practice went into the heart of each fan-dance, training foxes in a legacy that spanned generations, never to be written down on paper for humans to read.

As they passed another round and Kuzu-no-ha lifted the fan in a twist that brought its colors flashing across her vision, she remembered another afternoon with a different partner: an inexperienced kitsune who had mistaken her as the human nobleman she had been disguised as that month. He had fumbled adequately through the preliminaries of seduction, and she had humored him with an unflinching smile - right up until he had tipped the rolled-up scroll in his hands into the first gesture of this very same dance, and she had recognized the accident they were both colliding into.

She still vividly recalled the shock in the younger fox's eyes when she had allowed her fan to respond in the appropriate counterphrase - a tactful warning that she both knew what he was, _and_ what he was doing. He had stammered in mixed apology and horror; she had offered him a tiny, smug shrug back. The pleasure of the memory warmed her, relaxing her shoulders even as she swung into the next steps of the dance.

She and Tamamo-no-mae were going slower and slower now through the motions, like the gradual wheeling of stars through the night sky, so leisurely that they might have simply given up their fancy and were talking idly together. Each of their roles had overtaken their bones, down to the very pace of their breathing: Tamamo as the compassionate monk she was trying to fool, and Kuzu-no-ha as the eager supplicant hoping to be allowed inside the temple's storehouses. The fan in Kuzu-no-ha's hand fluttered with each idle tilt of her head. Her attention kept darting to Tamamo and away again, as if yearning for reassurance, but afraid of appearing too brazen.

Tamamo's gaze was fixed eagerly upon her; the monk was fully entranced.

This was the hardest part of the dance, when matched against a master. It was difficult to overcome the guilt that might bubble up at this last moment - when you knew that your prey's heart was in your teeth, and yet you had to go through with the deception anyway. Tamamo wore his role with tragic perfection. His face was open and honest, faith glimmering in his eyes. Each smile he offered brimmed over with a sincerity that was designed to sow grief inside anyone who might think to betray such trust.

Even as experienced as she was, Kuzu-no-ha felt a tug of doubt in her chest as she watched him perform. To be so cruel, and betray such an innocent soul - to deceive such a fine, kind man. Surely she did not need to go so far.

"Tell me your wishes," he called to her, all his defenses down at last, his sentiments laid bare like his throat on display for the taking. "From me, do not hide."

With grim determination, Kuzu-no-ha pulled her resolve together. Her shoulders were already turning in a calculated arc as she allowed her weight to shift back onto her other leg, lowering her posture just enough to allow her to look up pleadingly towards him. "All of your knowledge," she promised back: a final deception that all foxes needed to memorize. "Now - let me inside."

That was it, then; she had passed the final hurdle of the song. Tamamo yielded the victory to her with a smile and a bow. "As skilled as ever, Kuzu-no-ha," he remarked, his voice warm with an affection that was not simply conjured from the ruse of their dance. "So many whelps out there would be honored to be tricked by you."

Ignoring the compliment, Kuzu-no-ha stretched out her fingers, feeling the tension leaving them. When she glanced up into the courtyard, she saw her son watching them, his own practice forgotten; for how long, she did not know, but it was too late to prevent it now. Her chest automatically clenched in fear. She didn't know why, except that perhaps Tamamo was right - perhaps in this moment of watching his mother display her true nature, Seimei had found something foul, something repulsive that would make him believe in the lies of the onmyōji around them.

But then - _then_, she watched her son smile, both proud and delighted, and she couldn't help but smile back in relief.

"You should not have done that," she declared reluctantly to Tamamo, under her breath. "The _last_ thing I need is for my son to learn how to seduce half the city's nobles when he's older."

Tamamo arched an eyebrow, accepting his fan back from her and smoothing its wooden ribs together with brisk efficiency. "I believe that may happen regardless," he remarked, with a notable lack of concern. "He'll have to watch his bed partners carefully, either way. There will always be those out sniffing for the scent of fox."

The emptiness of her hands made her ache suddenly to hold a fan in them again. Across the yard, Seimei was frowning to himself as he lifted an arm in attempted mimicry of their performance. She wanted to regret it - she _did_ \- but it was hard when every instinct she possessed told her to rejoice instead.

It was only a little bit of knowledge, after all. She had performed her half of a fox's dance, and lightning had not struck her down for it. The world had not ended - yet.

"You are dangerous, Tamamo," she murmured, recognizing how deftly the man had outwitted her. "'Catching the Monk's Gaze', indeed. Or, I suppose, the _mother's._"

Tamamo acknowledged her accusation with a smug waggle of his fan. "All foxes must be dangerous, or else they'll perish. And a death of the spirit," he added tartly, "is still dead enough."

She bared her teeth at him, too weary to think of a human retort; he bared his own back playfully. She thought for one painfully wistful moment about how _good_ it would feel to take him up on that challenge and wrestle in the grass, teeth snapping, sun on her fur and warming her all the way down.

But she did not dare change. Not here. Onmyōji were everywhere, just waiting for the faintest sniff of power; it was hard enough keeping the estate clean of her own scent, even with Seimei's nature suppressed. A single transformation could ruin it all. Even if it meant lying to herself so well that she forgot herself in the process - forever losing the feel of earth under her paws and the tickle of wind against her ears - she would never risk her son.

Not here. Not now. Not _ever._

"That's enough, Tamamo," she whispered. As tempting as it was to listen to the other kitsune's reasons, she could not forget the ruthlessness by which the man lived; Tamamo-no-mae was a creature that both humans and spirits should fear, and rightly so. "This is far as I will go, for now."

With a long, anguished sigh, Tamamo cleared his throat, spreading his arms in an equally dramatic flourish. "Then I have no choice but to bring back stories of the city to you, carried on the colors of my fan," he announced, sweeping it open with a brush of his thumb. "Here now, little Seimei! Here's another rhyme for you to learn. This one is particularly valuable - though it's always a shame when you must use it too often. You sing it whenever you wish to cheer your loved ones up with some fun. Can you start the beat for me, just like I showed you? One, two," he nodded encouragingly, as Seimei gingerly began to tap his fan against the palm of his hand. "Good, just like that. Good!"

The patter of the song was nothing new - Kuzu-no-ha knew exactly how each of the lines would go - but she found herself nodding along despite herself as Tamamo delivered each increasingly-ribald joke, her own reflexes remembering the easy humor of it all. Her son startled at the first line, losing the beat briefly in astonishment as Tamamo sang about stealing smallclothes; then he began to grin, struggling not to laugh as the mischief only got worse from there.

It was irresistible. Even if Kuzu-no-ha wanted to deny Tamamo, she could not ignore her son's delight as Seimei became caught up in the story. She watched his face brighten, lost in his joy - until finally she stepped forward, crossing the yard until she could reach for her son's hand, smiling down at him as his smaller fingers curled into her own.

"Servants in dreams, and hounds all asleep," Tamamo called out to them, feet stamping as he grinned. "Lanterns will die and watchmen will weep!"

"Moon's beaten sun," she sang back, spreading her fingers wide in the air to help demonstrate the next steps. Seimei's fan followed along as she dipped her hand first to the left, then the right. "And with it the day - "

* * *

"- now come out and play, come out and play."

"Eh?" Hiromasa craned his head up from where he was working on his bow; the unstrung length of it lay like a disgruntled snake across the tatami. His legs sprawled around it, trapping it in place as he squinted at the grip. "What's that you're humming over there, Seimei?"

Seimei flicked his wrist; the fan lifted like a curtain over his lips, just low enough to cover the wistfulness of his smile. "Nothing, Hiromasa - merely an old song. I barely remember it now. More importantly, are you _sure_ I can't convince you to come investigate the rumors of that tōdaiki with me today?"

The other man groaned, leaning back in an exaggerated stretch of his arms that directed his plea towards the ceiling. "I already _said_ I'm busy." The scowl had been on his face since that morning; he hadn't said much beyond implying that it had involved a family argument. "I'll need to get a fresh set of strings before tomorrow - and besides, tōdaiki are _boring_. You find them, you purify them, you're done! It's not like they can even _run away._"

"Oh?" The star on Seimei's fan wavered as he trawled it idly through the air in small arcs of his wrist. "I suppose you're right. Kagura will be quite disappointed. Yao Bikuni told her about some of the flowers which grow near that family's estate, you see. If I had your sharp vision, I could find some to bring back with me, but I fear that on my own... "

_Flick, flick_, the fan went, back and forth. Hiromasa tracked it absently with his eyes as he kept leaning backwards, bracing himself on his hands.

At last, the man made a hiss between his teeth and relented. "_Fine_, if it's for Kagura! You're too good at changing people's minds, Seimei," he complained, but his motions were quick enough as he bounced to his feet, catching up his bow with an eagerness that was at odds with his words. "If I don't stay alert, who knows where you'll drag me next?"

Seimei smiled, finally closing his fan with a snap. "Who knows, indeed?"


End file.
